I've heard many people say that English is the hardest language to master. I believe it is to do with our syntax (the way our sentence structure is set up) and the fact that we have so many homophones (words that sound the same but mean different things).

According to this site: http://wzus.ask.com/r?t=p&d=us&s=a&c=a&l=dir&o=0&ld=2772&sv=0a300512&ip=4684039a&id=72E540D75A43B062C73CF33A1C3E6384&q=difficult+language+to+learn%3F&p=1&qs=0&ac=3&g=54a5wYGdXnlKqi&en=te&io=0&ep=&eo=&b=alg&bc=&br=&tp=d&ec=10&pt=Amazing%20Language%20Facts&ex=&url=&u=http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769288.html The basque language of north western Spain is the most difficult to learn - that's because it's not related to any modern language, and it remains a mystery as to how it evolved the way it did.

English is very difficult because of the slang and the misuse of the meanings of words in everyday use.

Full disclosure: I once taught four different foreign languages in a single day, while speaking a fifth foreign language to all my students. "Basque" is probably the correct answer. English is actually one of the easiest, for the simple reason that we don't have as many forms to memorize. Consider: the ancient Greek verb has 729 forms by actual count, but only one English verb has as many as eight forms, most have only five and some have just three. Likewise our nouns have only two forms (Eskimo nouns have up to a thousand), the singular and plural. (Russian has ten different plurals!) Our pronouns have a maximum of three forms--he, his and him, or she, her and hers. In Ukrainian, "I" has 7 forms, "you" has 14, the word "my" has 28... English numbers have one or two forms each, but in many languages there are a dozen to memorize. The easiest of all languages to learn is Spanish, and that's true from almost any country in the world. But English isn't too far behind. If twins were separated at birth and raised in different countries, met and started to learn each other's language at identical ages, the one learning English would learn faster than the other one in almost every case. The one big difficulty with English is our spelling and pronunciation. Our words are almost hieroglyphics--my granddaughter thought that grownups couldn't have "kidney disease" because they didn't have "kid knees".

You can't really grade languages on "difficulty of learning" - after all children learn them all the time with ease. But you can say that languages with more differences to your native tongue (or the languages you happen to speak) *could* be more difficult. For example, the tone systems in many languages (the Chinese ones being the biggest examples) may be hard for you to get to grips with if you speak only English. And Xhosa, one of the click languages of southern Africa, will be hard to physically say if you approach them as an American adult. Approach it as a Zulu however - it'll be easier Writing is similar - it depends how different it is to what you know. The Cyrillic alphabet is an alphabet likes ours; Arabic and Hebrew are a bit more complex; the Chinese writing system more complicated still. But all from the viewpoint of someone who only knows the Latin alphabet. So, I can't say what is the "most difficult" because it depends on *you*.

Basque,Inuit,Hungarian and Navajo are probably the most difficult languages in the world, but indigenous languages in many parts of the world can be quite challenging -- Kechwa(Peru), Pirahã (Amazon, Brazil),Yate (Pernambuco, Brazil), Farsi (Iran), to mention just a few. English is definitely NOT difficult because of its slang. All languages have some kind of slang, and not everybody uses slang all the time.

it depends on what your first language is...

British English is extremely difficult for tourists because of the varied accents, dialects and absurd expressions. Think Glaswegian, Belfast, Birmingham, Scouse or Aberdonian. These are some of the most native forms of English, yet even a Brit can ask a local to repeat what he said, simply because it sounds like Swahili.

Pure Arabic and pure Hebrew (not Yiddish) are the most difficult to learn as their pronunciation is very important. English is the easiest to learn from as it is not a real language but a mixture of languages, which is why people find a second language easy from English.

The hardest language to learn is traditionally accepted as Icelandic. I would personally have to say something like Japanese, Thai, Korean, or one of the Chinese or Indian languages as the writing would be so difficult to decipher for someone who's used to the Roman alphabet. I wouldn't know where to start.